Hawkeye Episodes 1 + 2 Review (Spoilers)

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing really well. Welcome to the Geek Cave. It was Josh's Nostalgia Corner, but, well, I was looking through the five posts that I have on here, and all five of them are about geeky subjects, like video games, comic books, and Science Fiction novels. So, I changed the name to better fit that description. Today I'm here to talk about the first two episodes of the new Disney+ series, Hawkeye. Because naturally Marvel decided to drop the first two episodes on the same day. I am going to be going into spoilers because there's alot I want to talk about which I can't do without spoiling anything. So you know what to do by now if you haven't watched the episodes yet. For those of you who have, let's talk about Clint Barton and Kate Bishop and how we're introduced to the newest character in the MCU shall we? Let's get right into it.

My excitement has been extremely high for this show since it was first announced back in 2019. But cautiously high because I didn't know what tone it would have or how grounded the series would be, given I wasn't big on WandaVision, Loki or What If...?. But when the trailer dropped back in September, I was pleasantly surprised that it looked like the series was going to be a low stakes, lighter romp than the previous four Marvel Disney+ shows that we'd had so far. Don't get me wrong, I loved The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and think it's one of the best shows I have ever watched, but when every comic book based show and movie, no matter what studio produces it, has high stakes and the deepest of philosophical meanings, it can get exhausting going from one to another with very little downtime between shows and movies. Which is why I appreciated the more down to earth approach that Hawkeye is taking because, apart from Kate Bishop's backstory being tied into the Battle of New York as shown in The Avengers (2012), there is no high concept premise for this show. It's literally Clint helping Kate, while wanting to get back to his family in time for Christmas. That's it. That's the premise of the show. And I freaking love it.

When the trailer dropped back in September, I was amazed at how closely the writers took inspiration from Matt Fraction's 2012 run on Hawkeye. Watching the first two episodes though I've realized that they went all out and introduced even more elements from Fraction's run with Fraction serving as a consulting producer on the show, which is actually really cool, because, having reread the first trade paperback volume of his run a month or two ago, in preparation for this show, I actually like it alot more than I did when I first read it a few years ago. So to see it come to life on my TV screen is pretty awesome.

The best part of this show so far is Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop. This is my first encounter with this young performer in live action. She voiced Gwen Stacy/Spider Woman in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and she was incredible in that role. But I've never had the opportunity to see her in a live action movie or on a TV show before now though I've heard wonderful things about her performance in the Apple TV+ series, Dickinson (2019-present) as the titular character, Emily Dickinson. Kate Bishop is my favourite character in Matt Fraction's comic book run and to see Hailee Steinfeld slip right into the role as if she's always played the character was a huge relief, because introducing new characters in a franchise as massive as the MCU can be a tricky thing. Especially when you only have six episodes in which to play around with these characters.

I like that we got so much screentime with Kate in these first two episodes. Mainly because I was afraid that her introduction was going to be Clint unmasking her as Ronin, like we saw in the teaser back in September, and that doesn't happen until the very end of the first episode, "Never Meet Your Heroes". But, she was actually the main focus of these first two episodes. Barton didn't have as much screentime as I thought he would, but that's okay, because we've been with him for ten years, since his cameo in Thor (2011). And Marvel Studios has enough experience introducing brand new characters into their shared cinematic universe that they ended up pulling it off extremely well.  

If it seems like I'm spending alot of time talking about Kate Bishop, that's because I am. She's the main character of this show. Yes, Clint Barton is there, but he's playing more of the mentor role in this show similar to how the elderly Bruce Wayne played mentor to Terry McGinnis's Batman in Batman Beyond (1999-2001). Except, you know, Barton is alot younger in this show than Bruce was in that show. But still, the showrunners have confirmed that Kate will be replacing Barton as Hawkeye by the end of the show, so that's going to be cool.

One of the things that absolutely floored me when I watched these two episodes is that Kate has a personal connection to Jack Duquesne, who is Jacques Duquesne, a.k.a. the Swordsman, the person who adopted Clint when he joined the circus in the comics. Apparently, he's engaged to Kate's mom, Eleanor. So that will be interesting to see how that pans out over the course of the next four episodes. Honestly, I didn't see a cast list for the show on IMDB, or on Wikipedia, so I had no idea that the Swordsman was even going to show up in this show, letalone in the first episode. So that's cool. He's only mentioned in the first trade paperback volume of Fraction's comic book run, so I haven't actually encountered him in the comics before. The amazing part is that in the show he actually looks like the stereotypical moustache twirling villain that most of the classic comic book villains pretend to be. Even if they don't look the part.

The Tracksuit Mafia is even more annoying on the screen than they are in the comic and they're extremely, EXTREMELY, annoying in the comic. They actually kind of remind me of henchmen from Power Rangers. They're supposed to be threatening and intimidating, but they just end up being a complete joke because they're super dumb and make me want to claw my eyes out. And I guess that's the point of them, at least for this show, but if I have to hear "what's that bro?" or "I'm coming after you bro" one more time, I'm going to scream. I kid you not. It's more annoying to hear it on the TV than it is to read it in the comics, and even then, I kept praying that it would be over soon when I read the comic. If it weren't for the fact that I'd miss anything Barton or Kate says, I'd mute the TV every time these guys are on screen. That's how bad they are.

I'm glad that the writers didn't set Kate's backstory during Avengers: Endgame, or in between Infinity War and Endgame. Mainly because every other live action Marvel show this year has done that, since they're the first things we've seen since Spider-Man: Far From Home came out two years ago, which came out right after Endgame. Instead they set it, at the very beginning of episode 1, during the Battle of New York, as I said earlier. Which is basically when the MCU really took off in the real world and we were introduced to Clint Barton after his quick cameo in Thor, as well as the Mark Ruffalo version of the Hulk. So that was really cool. 

It was also interesting to see Clint's family again. They don't have a huge role, but I'd forgotten just how much they know about Clint's life as both Hawkeye and as Ronin. I also completely forgot that Linda Cardellini plays his wife, Laura. Mainly because we haven't actually seen her, apart from her cameo at the beginning of Endgame, since Age of Ultron came out back in 2015. 

As you know from my posts on my old blog, The Review Basement, I'm not a big Marvel fan. And with so much coming out post-Endgame, I decided to bow out of most of the MCU stuff because it's too much and most of it I'm just not interested in. So I've been very selective when it comes to the MCU stuff that I've watched this year. I've sampled all of it, but prior to this, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the only Marvel Disney+ show that I've watched all the way through. I love Science Fiction and I love comic books, but sometimes I need a break from the high stakes and high concept elements of them. Especially since I'm a character guy, so I find myself not connecting to many of the characters being featured in these shows like Wanda and Loki, which leaves me not wanting to watch their shows because I just don't connect to them the way I do characters like Clint Barton, like Kate Bishop, like Clark Kent, like Oliver Queen, like Bruce Wayne. Yes, Clark Kent is Superman and is stronger than most people, but he is more like us than we like to think of him as. While Clint, Kate, Oliver, and Bruce are all superheroes who don't have any powers. All they have are their skills, their ingenuity, and their drive to persevere in the face of adversity. And Hawkeye has alot of good character stuff to latch onto.

I am so excited for next week's episode. I haven't been this excited for a weekly show that isn't Star Trek since The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended back in March. I'm not going to do full reviews of every episode though it is extremely tempting to do so. What I am going to do is if I have something I want to talk about each week then I'll write about it here on the blog. If I don't then I won't. In the meantime though I will be back tomorrow for another review. This time I'll be talking about the comic that this show took inspiration from. Hawkeye #'s 1-5 by Matt Fraction. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you later. Take care.